The Tavern

Hi, so I'm running into a issue. I been struggling with how to manage centaurs. Out of all the creatures I've encountered so far, centaurs have caused me the most grief. I've dealt with a hand full of uniques, ghostplayers and for a new player I manage to deal with them well. I tend to play a Deep Elf - Fire elementalist, at times that I encounters centaurs I realize that I either have to get in range or run. Either decision usually ends in a undeserved death. Literally these bastards take me out in about 2-3 shots. As my class how dose one deal with them?

Yours truly,
Centaur's magical punching bag.

1) Try to have always only 1 monster in LOS
2) Don't run toward him, but make him move toward you backtracking to a safe explored area
3) Against ranged enemies, especially fast one like centaurs, don't move back while being in open area, because they will have enough "turns" to act freely against you, but use walls or other ways to block their line of fire\sight, so they need to approach you in melee without having "turns" to hit you from afar. Notice that a weak enemy is a 100% legit way to put a block between you and that ranged monster, unless he has a smite-spell (like orc priest).

So, in your case, if you spot a lone centaur, the ideal thing to do - if you are sure to be able to melee him - attract his attention throwing a rock or as you wish while standing near a wall-corner. After that, move behind that protection, so he will run towards you without being able to shot. Fight him in melee range, he will use much weaker attack. Kill him and repeat.

A early centaur - D:4/6 - in the open is a terrible enemy. Most combo in that case need to use some consumable to survive\win the fight,if he spot you, like ?fog, ?fear, !agility, hex wands, and so on. Don't die with identified good things in inventory, use them.
If you haven't identified a good consumable yet, and you are in a situation where you are pretty positive to die without aid, read\quaff id. At worst you'll have wasted a turn quaffing !degen, !mut or ?random uselessness

Please note that if a very dangerous enemy hasn't woken up\spotted you, and the situation is unfavourable to you, the best thing is to run away asap. A deadly centaur isn't deadly if he doesn't see you. Depending on level layout, danger of the monster and other consideration, skipping part\all the level would be a sensible choice

Ty for the advice Nago!

Just run behind the corner and wait for him to come to you. Then go in melee range with him.

Fuck Nagos advice you can win games with just this

He literally said the same though.

Nah he was talking about throwing rocks and enemy shielding and stuff, what he should have said was go trog

If Trog maximizes your chances to win deep elf fire elementalist, I have some bad new for you

I will prove this by winning that combo with trog

OP, if you post a "character dump" that's typical of the games where you lose to centaurs, we can give you more specific advice. Here are a couple of general things that might help implement nago's advice:

1. Train stealth. A few levels of stealth skill early on can help you avoid situations like this, because you're more likely to be able to back away from a dangerous enemy before it notices you. Then you can choose whether to avoid or engage on your own turns.

2. Use exclusions. You can set an exclusion on a tile (and the LOS radius around it) to prevent yourself from accidentally travelling into view of dangerous monsters, once you know where they are. Press 'x' to enter view mode, then 'e' to toggle exclusions (you can use the targeting shortcuts to switch between visible monsters/items). You can also toggle exclusions from the map view mode 'X', and 'E' will quickly switch between exclusions on the current level.

3. Don't play Deep Elf. Especially as a new player, DE are on the challenging side because of their low HP and poor aptitudes in fighting and weapon skills. One of the most counterintuitive things to learn about Crawl is that (if you want to win consistently) you should almost never play a "pure mage" or "pure fighter" character -- every game should be a mix where you "hybridize" to some extent, and will eventually want some weapon/fighting skills on a mage and some magic on a fighter. With this in mind, try a more robust/balanced species like Draconian FE instead.

Actually, "pure fighters" are pretty good.

They're certainly much better than "pure mage"

Unless you call training evocation "hybridizing" pure melee is probably the easiest to win.

I am not saying it is impossible (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=12446). I am saying that it is much easier to win if you are going for Vehumet or some other gods who don't punish your main method of killing things.

Depending on your God pure fighter is a pretty perfect build I guess if you are doing extended or you have every useful skill at 20 you can dip into utility spells

Thanks for the tips guys!

Anecdote =/= data.

"There's an alert centaur in an open space and I don't have a way to deal with it" is a 100% valid time to immediately read a teleport scroll, find stairs down, and skip the level -- or at very least, avoid open spaces.

Turns out you had a way of dealing with it :). I'd estimate that most characters at D:4/6 don't have an identified teleportation scroll in inventory...

Then read an unknown scroll. Teleport, blinking, fear, fog, summoning. Probably even acquirement can be useful though I am not sure how to optimize its use... Acquire a wand probably since all wands will be very useful vs Centaur, even slowing.

Literally the end of my let's play is like 90% of my problems ridiculous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRrSnhZvgg4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soc5WeKpwfk

20:44, you are at 7 HP after exchanging blows with a gnoll sergeant. If you had moved back 1 step from your conjured flame, the gnoll sergeant wouldn't be able to reach you with his spear

20:53, there's a set of upstairs that you could take to heal back to full health. Since the gnoll was 2 steps away you had a decent shot of making it up (or you could quaff a potion of curing first). This was probably the best way to escape.

21:03, the centaur is asleep when you first notice it.

You didn't open your inventory a single time. You could have done all kinds of things; throw nets at the gnolls, read a scroll of blink/fog/teleport/fear, drink a potion of heal wounds/curing, use wands on yourself/your foes, etc. Most of all, walking into unexplored territory at low HP is never a good idea; you shouldn't have retreated in that direction to begin with.